Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Happy Birthday to my Honey!

Yesterday was Anastasio's Birthday and we celebrated properly with a babysitter and romantic dinner night out for the two of us at Oswald's in Santa Cruz!

But before our evening began, I wanted to celebrate with the baby too, so I made a birthday cake for the mister. This Chocolate, Cheesecake & Nut Crumble recipe comes from the Brown Eyed Baker. I choose this, instead of one of my basic cakes, because I really don't like cake very much so I thought I'd try something different.

This came out really moist and only slightly rich, which was perfect! I used neufchatel cheese (less fat) instead of cream cheese, and pecans & hazelnuts instead of walnuts. Other than that, I followed the recipe as is, oh ya, the other exception was the eggs:

One very important and common mistake in baking is that when butter or cream cheese is suppose to be at room temperature people often forget that the eggs also have to be at room temperature. This is because you want the eggs to blend well into the butter/cheese so you want them at the same temp. Otherwise a cold egg mixing into a warmed (room temp) butter/cheese won't completely blend and will not get as fluffy as it can be!